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tallulahgs[Title] Broken Hallelujahs
[Rating] PG-13 (slightly above that language-wise)
[Fandom] Death Note
[Story Summary] AU. Neither Raito nor Near's victory went as planned. Now the task force and the SPK are on the run with Kira's notebook and all the power of the new world against them.
Kira's first live-TV judgement begins.
[Chapter 14 on Fanfiction.net]
[Chapter 14 on skyehawke.com]
[Rating] PG-13 (slightly above that language-wise)
[Fandom] Death Note
[Story Summary] AU. Neither Raito nor Near's victory went as planned. Now the task force and the SPK are on the run with Kira's notebook and all the power of the new world against them.
Kira's first live-TV judgement begins.
[Chapter 14 on Fanfiction.net]
[Chapter 14 on skyehawke.com]
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no subject
Date: 2012-01-16 11:23 pm (UTC)D:
you weren't kidding with the sinister grin from last time, were you?
no subject
Date: 2012-01-17 09:01 pm (UTC)^_____________^
JUST AS PLANNEDno subject
Date: 2012-01-17 09:23 pm (UTC)I had a VERY detailed dream about this story last night.
As in... to the point where i was all SHIT I CANT REMEMBER THE FIRST KANJI OF YAGAMI SHIT WHERE ARE THE BOOKS
No word of exaggeration either D:
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Date: 2012-01-18 07:50 pm (UTC)Awesome, I'm in your headI'm flattered!Did you remember the kanji? I do hope he didn't get the drop on you.
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Date: 2012-01-17 11:34 pm (UTC)I was really expecting Mikami to stay with Light, so it was a real surprise to see him take Gevanni's side, and all the way to the end, too.
I really liked Misa's thinking about Takada's kitchen, and thinking about all of the meals that Light might have had with Takada without her.
Looks like, in a few paragraphs, Light has come so close to victory, and has had it swiped from his hands. Even if Light killed him, it's too late. With the six of them surviving, Kira is going to start losing his sway, particularly since he has no pages of the Death Note and he's going to have to use the scrap he has, sparingly.
I guess he has an unplayed card in the out-of-action Mello, who, presumably, is still unconscious. Needless to say, that's going to be a hard card to play even with a worse-for-wear Mello.
This chapter went from being definitely hopeless to gaining some tentative hope. Even so, there's going to be some tension between the taskforce, even if they do survive, perhaps irreparably so.
Looking forward to next week, as always. :D
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Date: 2012-01-18 07:52 pm (UTC)Yes, the task force may not be... um, the best of friends if they survive this. But... they could survive! Maybe! That's good! :D
Thank you as always!
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Date: 2012-01-18 09:27 pm (UTC)Plus, outside of their rivalry, there's not much in giving both her and Misa identical motives in being there with Light.
*Fingers crossed* :D
Sorry, my message was a little long.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-19 07:21 pm (UTC)In the first draft, she didn't do much, she was just in love with him, and I was all "... why are you even here, Takada?" Exploring her interest in power was more fun.
No problem at all! I love your detailed comments ^^
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Date: 2012-01-20 03:05 pm (UTC)I think that being power hungry could be a big part of her character, even if she does love Light, which makes her less sympathetic than she would have been, otherwise. Misa doesn't have that hunger for power, really, at least not in the same way. She's violently protective over what she does have, though, and is easily selfish and jealous.
Cool! :) I realised that that one was even longer than usual.
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Date: 2012-01-22 07:39 pm (UTC)No. Misa doesn't hunger for power for herself at all, but she does try and take control in most situations, whatever she may tell Raito!
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Date: 2012-01-20 05:00 am (UTC)"Light has come so close to victory, and has had it swiped from his hands."
Don't you mean, hand? I know, I know, that's a low blow (to Light) ;)
no subject
Date: 2012-01-22 07:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-22 09:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-20 06:29 am (UTC)Things sure are writhing in this chapter! Alliances broken, truths revealed, and one Kiyomi Takada departs the stage, marking Kira's very first public kill in the story. Near had once accused Raito of lacking in the imagination department, but it looks like this flaw had also befallen Kira's loyal supporter and spokesperson. That and short memory, I suppose. I guess the lesson is that even though it looks like pages from a Death Note, it might not be unless you test it first (for real!).
The encounter between Raito, Ide and Matsuda is one part deep freeze, one part humor and one part tenderness - making it a cocktail of forces that bump up against one another, unevenly. Raito sets the tone to ice cold with his dropping the clothes on the floor and ordering a shell-shocked Matsuda to pick them up. Ide continues his inner and outer struggle to cut through the ice - with humor ("winning in the complete set of fingers department" - yes! that one drew a chuckle of my appreciation for humor in dark places) and tenderness as he helps Matsuda change into the prison uniform, even as he says "Actually I've got better things to do," in a callback to their first desperomantic encounter.
Ide finally gets his chance to mouth off in the NHN storage room, but Raito is ready with a counterattack, laying bare the truths of Matsuda's phone call, Ide's coverup of said phonecall, and finally, their relationship. The scene simmers with arguments - Ide vs. Raito, Ide vs. Aizawa, and finally Ide vs. Ide. These arguments then spill onto others. (I only wish there was a glimpse at what the SPK were doing while these exchanges were going on.) In one moment Ide berates himself for not looking at the others as if he could "freeze that moment", in the next he's mentally admonishing Matsuda for not looking at anyone. Then, in an attempt to relieve the weight that's crushing Matsuda he shifts blame onto Mogi, and even Aizawa. It's like a domino effect that keeps the whole set of antagonisms rolling, at a time when one might consider them to be least relevant. If nothing else, it's a testament to how people cling to life, how continuing these arguments keeps them grounded, somewhat. Well, except for Matsuda -- what is going on in his head, I wonder...
The same kind of turbulence is present within two of the three Kiras gathered in the hotel room. Both Misa and Mikami are processing and parsing what is going on, and their parsing takes very different trajectories.There was one line there that threw me out a bit - "She was one of the evil ones." - It just didn't work for me, maybe because it's so vague. One thing that you've done brilliantly throughout the story is make Raito's dialogue sharp and precise, something that's well established in canon (I can think of only maybe 3 scenes when Raito unravels - after L reveals himself, on top of L's grave and in the warehouse and of those I'd argue only the last one is a complete unraveling). Here, even though he is impatient, or even distracted, it still seems out of place to me. I'd expect something like "She deserved to be punished" or even shorter "She deserved it". I hope this makes sense, even if you don't agree :)
Mikami's inner monologue wavers between weighing what he knows and understands about the situation, but also trying to talk himself into... something. The connection between Gevanni's plea ("please don't let him write down our names") and Mikami's past (the one he's sure of!) works like a circuit that closes and snap! just like that, propels him into action.
Finally, the parallel between Higuchi and Raito. It further brings the score to a draw. It makes me wonder why Raito didn't wait until after executing the SPK and the task force to kill Takada. My guess would be that he wanted Kira's comeback to be as stunning as possible and to coincide with Takada's public confession of her sins.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-20 06:31 am (UTC)I guess I ran up against some kind of 4300 character limit, so here's the remainder:
In the final scene, the simmering of arguments finds a kind of closure with Mogi. He doesn't retaliate against Ide's attacks, instead taking them in and offering his concern for a colleague who's hurt and forgotten in the aftermath of the botched execution. There is a faint echo of an internal argument as he compares his romantic tryst with Misa to what he has just learned about Ide and Matsuda, but his calm and steady personality wins over it, or at least tables that argument until later.
In conclusion,why isn't it Monday yet?no subject
Date: 2012-01-22 07:46 pm (UTC)Re: the evil ones line, yes, I do see what you mean. My thinking when I wrote it was that Raito was using Mikami's own rhetoric and wasn't bothering to construct an argument because he thought Mikami was still loyal to him... so he was just all, "you don't need to worry about her. Just put her in that box marked Sinners, and carry on worshipping me." So he wasn't interested in being precise, but if you think it didn't ring true then that's fine - I can definitely see your thinking.
Yes, he wanted everyone to see Takada's death, and also, I think, he liked that she wouldn't get to preside over the execution - that it would be Kira, sweeping through cutting down all the sinners, and she wouldn't be associated with it at all. Of course, he was also not, perhaps, in his most logical mood and so wasn't considering the potential repercussions of this!
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Date: 2012-01-24 02:32 am (UTC)One of these days I'll have to do another collage (I already an idea, just need the time and space).
Or write a review as a series of haikus. Ha!